Film Review: Sisters

Sometime during your spree of 10 Star Wars: The Force Awakens viewings this weekend, consider being a force for good by seeing Sisters. Sisters equals happiness, which is the opposite of anger. And we all know what anger is on the path to.

Reteaming once again, one of my favorite comedy duos is back on the big screen as, you guessed it… Hitmen! No, wait… I mean sisters! To celebrate the step back to a more “conventional” relationship compared to the surrogate and mom-to-be dynamic of Baby Mama, the roles are switched as Amy Poehler takes on the more serious and responsible anchor to Tina Fey’s chaotic and dysfunctional screw up, now with the freedom of an R rating! That’s right, we’re dropping F-bombs in this one!

Seeing as I recently marathoned all of 30 Rock, it was a little disconcerting to hear the words coming out of Fey’s mouth as she cemented who her character is. It takes a while to get used to, but even then my acceptance of Fey was greatly hindered by her previous pairing with Poehler. Between Baby Mama, 30 Rock, and Poehler’s height, I was definitely more comfortable with Fey as the hand-holder, but once these two came together and became a team with their perfected repartee the switch was much easier to accept.

That said, I still found myself comparing Sisters to Baby Mama. There was just something more natural to the feel of the first comedy, and the expectations of a return to form definitely became detrimental to this new outing. Sisters still stays far from becoming too zany of a comedy where the jokes take precedent over the story, yet there are still more moments here where you can see the jokes being teed up as both the major conflict and set piece of the film are being prepped, as opposed to just letting the story unfold. In other words, the plot points are often to blame for weakening the flow of Sisters, but even so Fey and Poehler are always there to smooth things out. They find the funny in all and manage to make most situations feel real instead of scripted. A heightened version of what’s real, but close enough. For all else, bring in Bobby Moynihan. Or John Cena. I never thought I would say it, but he seems to be the go to for guaranteed laughs these days. Who knew.

Let’s face it; as much as the cast likes to joke about combating Star Wars at the box office this weekend we know which movie is going to win. But Sisters is a solid runner up. Both a runner up to The Force Awakens and to Baby Mama, but those were some big shoes to fill to begin with.